Category Archives: Politics

The suspicious suicides of four engineers working at the Turkish corporation ASELSAN could have been caused by telekinesis, according to a report by the Turkish Prime Ministry Inspection Board.

The report, presented to the Ankara Public Prosecutor in accordance with the ongoing investigation over the 2006-2007 suicides, claimed the victims could have been directed toward the suicides by way of telekinesis, citing the work done by neuropsychology expert Nevzat Tarhan.

Hüseyin Başbilen, an engineer at Turkey’s military research and development enterprise, Aselsan, was found dead in his car on Aug. 7, 2006. A court ruled in 2009 that he committed suicide. Two other engineers working at Aselsan died shortly after Başbilen.

Halim Ünal was shot in the head with one bullet on Jan. 17, 2007, while Evrim Yançeken fell from the balcony of his sixth-floor apartment nine days later. Burhanettin Volkan allegedly killed himself in 2009.

Tarhan’s study, included in the board’s report, asked the prosecution not to disregard the possibility of telekinesis as a possible cause of the suicides, which could cause severe distress and headaches in the victims, giving them a tendency to kill themselves.

The waves could be sent from 1.5 kilometers, and could direct victims towards a suicidal state of mind, Tarhan told daily Hürriyet.

Tarhan said an overcharge of electromagnetics could have also had the same effect on the engineers, which would then indicate neglect.

All three engineers were working on a friend-or-foe recognition system for Turkish warplanes at the time of their suicides, which had been brought back to public debate during the Ergenekon coup trials.

Telekinesis recently made the news after journalist Yiğit Bulut claimed that certain powers were trying to kill Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan through telekinesis. Weeks after his teories, Bulut was named a chief consultant for Erdoğan.

ASELSAN is one of country’s leading military electronics companies, with multiple defense and technology awards in its history.

Saudi Arabia has sent seven people to jail for up to ten years for posting status messages calling for anti-government protests, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.

According to a statement issued Sunday by the New York-based human rights organization, the seven activists were all from the country’s Eastern Province and were convicted and sentenced to prison for terms ranging from five to ten years.

The eastern sector has seen a number of demonstrations by minority Shi’ites over alleged government discrimination and negligence since the region-wide Arab Spring uprisings two years ago.

“Sending people off to years in prison for peaceful Facebook posts sends a strong message that there’s no safe way to speak out in Saudi Arabia, even on online social networks,” HRW deputy Middle East director Joe Stork said in the statement.

“If the European Union doesn’t raise these cases with Saudi officials this weekend, its silence will look like craven compliance with the rights abuses of an authoritarian state.”

EU officials, including foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and other European officials, are meeting on Sunday with their Gulf counterparts – including Saudi Arabia.

Numerous Arab media have reported that Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) banned Viber earlier this month, and also plans to block the WhatsApp Internet-based communications app as well, along with Skype.

The Saudi government makes a routine practice of closely monitoring all social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter.

Women listen to a speech by Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai during a district assembly gathering in Kabul last month. — Reuters

KABUL — A legal requirement that women make up at least a quarter of all provincial elected officials was quietly removed by conservative male parliamentarians, officials said, the latest in a series of decisions undermining advances in women’s rights in Afghanistan.

The change, engineered in mid-May, was only discovered by women members of parliament a few days ago.

The action has sparked fears among women’s rights activists that President Hamid Karzai’s government is increasingly willing to trade away their hard fought gains to placate the Taliban as part of attempts to coax them to the peace table.

Activists said it could also reduce the number of women serving in parliament’s upper house, as most women are elected there via their role as elected provincial officials.

“In negotiations you don’t gain anything unless you also give something up,” said prominent women’s rights activist and MP Farkhunda Naderi.
“This is a political strategy: to please (the Taliban) in peace talks they’re willing to give up women’s rights.”

Women entered Afghanistan’s male-only political arena in 2001 soon after the overthrow of the hardline Taliban regime by a US-led invasion.
The law had previously set aside for women at least a quarter of seats in some 400 district and 34 provincial councils.

Seventeen of 28 women in the upper house are appointed by Karzai. The remaining 11 must be chosen from among women sitting on district and provincial councils, but those positions are now under a cloud. The change was approved by parliament’s lower house, the Wolesi Jirga, on May 22.
Prominent parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi said female members did not discover the change until last week.

“(They) removed it without informing us. We trusted that the law we signed off on was the same as previous drafts,” she said, referring to the members who made the changes. The law still needs approval from the upper house and Karzai before being passed into law.

Critics of the change told Reuters its removal will not only affect women’s ability to serve in the upper house, but also do away with more than 100 seats in local government bodies nationwide that were previously guaranteed to women.

“Women are not in the position to win votes in this country based on popular vote alone, this amendment is worrisome they’ll lose their voice,” said Noor Mohammad Noor, spokesman for Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission.

Conservative male parliamentarians backing the change said the concept of granting rights based on their gender was unconstitutional.

“It’s undemocratic to grant a seat to a woman even though a man had more votes, simply because the law favors her,” said Qazi Nasir Ahmad Hanafi, head of the legislative commission. — Reuters